


soon to the night we will go

by LocketShoru



Category: Saint Seiya, 聖闘士星矢: 冥王神話 | Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas
Genre: AAverse, Hurt/Comfort, Mirrorverse, Oneshot, Other, emphasis on the comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-16
Updated: 2020-01-16
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:48:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22282870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LocketShoru/pseuds/LocketShoru
Summary: Sometimes, the Aries Surplice thinks, it's worth it to be nice and let yourself be snuggled. Food usually makes it worth it. So does the act itself.
Relationships: Aries Cloth & Aries Surplice
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	soon to the night we will go

**Author's Note:**

> This is Tsuko's fault, which should surprise nobody. I wanted to spit something nice out before class, ofc it's nothing I actually had planned. I've flipped the falling snow the bird twice in the past hour. Fuck snow.  
> Chrysomallus is the original name of the Aries Surplice. Beneath the Starry Skies is required reading for understanding this, as it calls Mirrorverse into effect.  
> Also, the song is Up High by the Dreadnoughts, a local band that I love. Haunting little fuckin' war song, I think it's fitting.

It was nothing but a quiet melody, far off in someone else’s temple. A new melody, made by an instrument called a piano, invented about thirty years prior. And there was only silence. Their breathing was quiet, and their counterpart silent, resting beside them, where they were reasonably safe.

Aries had refused to leave their temple, preferring to stay somewhere familiar, somewhere not diseased with memories of destruction, of losing it all. Chrysomallus had stayed beside them, resting their horns together, entangled in each other. Shion would be home soon, off at the market trying to talk someone into giving him the good kind of bread for a decent price. In the meantime, all they needed to do was rest together.

Aries shifted, ever so slightly, to lean more into their ribs. Chrysomallus shifted their hind legs in response, settling the knee of one overtop their hips in a quiet attempt to comfort them. It wasn’t treason, and they had no qualms about justifying it if anyone asked. Not that anyone would- the only one who would notice was Qirine, their good friend the Libra Surplice, who was off drawing lines with their own counterpart on who got dibs on what situations over their bearer.

‘ _Do you know how to sing?_ ’ Aries asked, without moving. Their voice was the barest idea of sound on starlight air, as much as their partial corruption would allow. It was a tragedy that they wished they’d seen coming, but they supposed it wasn’t entirely out of the blue.

“Once upon a time,” they answered softly, leaning into them, gorget against gorget. Their horns were already tangled, but it had taken a long time to get used to not having a muzzle either. They didn’t remember the last time they’d sung for someone. It would have been thousands of years prior… their mother, maybe? It seemed like perhaps a good idea, if they thought for a moment that song would ease the Aries Cloth’s pain.

‘ _Can you sing…?_ ’ Aries’ Cosmos reached out towards them and they shifted, reaching theirs in return, like leaning pauldrons, like nuzzling the muzzle of a dear friend they loved. Cosmos that shifted and brushed up against each other and entwined. 

“Come my brothers,” they whispered, holding the last syllable, finding the right song rising to their core. “Come all fighting men. Come together while we may- we ne'er may meet again.” 

It was an old war song, one from a few Holy Wars past that they thought Griffon Minos might have come up with nearing the end of the war. The Holy War hadn’t truly started yet - it was a few months off, no more than three seasons - but it felt right. 

“Come all you Spectres, sing out proud and brave. Each man fallen here before, stirs now in his grave.”

Aries’ Cosmos flared, answering, like they knew the song. ‘ _So raise your voice up high, sing their praises, sing for us all and the men we will slay... And raise your voice up high, sing for victory, sing for the way we will honour our dead. We remember. We remember…_ ’

“Day's light is passing, soon to the night we'll go… If we are Spectres true and true, tomorrow we will know… Know our voices. Know we all march with you. Souls of our fathers dead and gone - march with us now so true.”

Their voices combined in the chorus, Cosmos melting together like hands that clasped and once-flesh bodies curled around each other like dying stars. Aries’ voice was sorrow on starlight, a whisper of agony through the Lord of Darkness’ binding. Chrysomallus’ voice was soft, bitter, wanting to help and not having the faintest idea how. 

“You know the song?” they asked, reaching out, shifting a foreleg to rest over Aries’, wondering vaguely if they would notice the contact. It surprised them: Spectres didn’t tend to go into battle singing, and a Cloth generally had no reason to be in the Underworld.

Aries didn’t answer, only twitched their Cosmos like rolling their eyes. For a moment, they could taste the bitter corruption on them, and realized how stupid of a question it was. Gateguard, of course. A corrupted Cloth wasn’t much different than a surplice, at the end result. Composition was different, personality was different: but to a human who didn’t know their way around a forge, it was all the same. 

They sighed, softly, shifting their Cosmos to press a gentle kiss to the side of one horn. Aries flickered theirs, relaxing the starlight air, seemingly pacified.

Sometimes, honestly, it was incredibly difficult to tell what Aries was supposed to be. Gateguard had all but exploded when he died, taking his Cloth down with him, as far as they were aware. Avenir had arisen from the ashes of his predecessor and a spell wrought by a future written out of existence with his arrival, taking a version of Aries that could no longer ever go home with him. The Aries Cloth that rested against them now was a mixture of the pieces, forged together by a Saint who had spent thirty years fighting and still botched the job mostly beyond repair.

Shion hadn’t really been able to fix it, and worst of all, he could truly see the damage done to them. He could see how badly they’d been hurt, and hadn’t been able to salvage anything. He had called with his despair, incapable of pulling his Goddess from wherever she hid between the wars, and when Chrysomallus had arrived for him, it was bemusedly to learn that the reason was thanks to their counterpart, broken and agonized and incapable of recognizing pretty much anything but their name.

They tsked, and lifted them up, and took Shion to the forges of the Underworld. Mostly to get on his good side, yes, but they pulled out rivets and spot-welds and plates to find more and more damage, and their disgust only grew.

Maybe they weren’t really cut out for war. The Underworld weren’t the only victims of what the Goddess of War was capable of. Her own soldiers, Cloths and Saints, suffered more than they realized. Sure, they knew Saints suffered. They had one job and it was to take the Aries Saints that no longer trusted her, and try to salvage what was left of them. They were the Aries Surplice, that was their entire purpose until they could put the wars behind them.

Aries let out a soft noise, one of gentle agony, one that meant something along the lines of ‘I can hear your thoughts and it makes me sad’. 

“Sorry,” they answered, voice low, reaching out their Cosmos to kiss their horn again. The point remained: they were the only one who knew enough of what Aries had been before to know how to put them back together. It wasn’t like they were ever going to be quit of each other, at least not in the next five thousand years. They were angry, yes- so very angry that this had been allowed to happen. Just like so many other tragedies they woke up just long enough to witness. “Aries- _foréas_ will be back soon with food, if that helps.”

‘ _Food sounds good_ …’ Aries’ Cosmos slipped between the waves of their own, as if clinging to them, like a mask pressed into their gorget for comfort. At least now they could string a sentence together. ‘ _But… In the song, it says to sing someone’s praises… That isn’t Hades, is it?’_

“No,” they answered, before realizing that maybe they should have lied on that one. Aries’ Cosmos remained questioning, without saying anything, trying to conserve their strength for the rest of the conversation, expecting them to continue. “I… The first few Holy Wars were lead by the Lord of Darkness’ children. They were the generals before the Judges stepped up to fill the gap. I don’t think the Spectres know whose praises they’re really singing. Maybe that’s for the best.”

‘ _What happened to them?_ ’

“They died of grief.” Chrysomallus’ voice was flat. They wanted it to sound like they just didn’t want to talk about it, expressing it through their Cosmos, pushing out the emotion that was entirely false. They were warming up to the Aries Cloth, yes, and could see themself loving them in the bright day of the future, when all was peaceful, but that didn’t mean they had to admit to it yet. Chrysomallus, sixth-born child of Hades and Persephone, God of death achieved through time, and sometimes they still forgot they didn’t actually have a head anymore if they were on four legs. It was a good way to keep their head, if they pardoned the pun. “They put everything they had left into making me and my siblings, and they were gone. We were their last creation… I still love them.”

‘ _Who made you, then…?’_ Aries pressed. They were too out of it for a proper conversation with actual depth, but they were remembering bits and pieces, and they’d always been a smart cookie. They knew something was off, even if they didn’t know what.

“Chrysomallus,” they said, stretching the truth a little. Technically, yes, they had made themself. The door opened behind them, carrying with the motion a presence that they knew to be Shion, who certainly did seem to have groceries and was humming to himself.

“You two look comfortable,” he remarked, his Cosmos a gentle smile on the air. Chrysomallus looked up.

“We’d be more comfortable if you would be so kind as to give us your food and a blanket,” they answered mildly. Aries’ Cosmos flickered with amusement, leaning over to rest their weight almost entirely on them. Shion laughed. It was a sound they were more than amiable to hearing a few more times - maybe for years, if they did it right. Aries had already asked them to take care of him if they gave out on them both. They’d only responded by pointing out that they’d fix them. Aries had strengths they didn’t, even if they didn’t always recognize them.

Shion was still laughing as he dropped a fur-lined blanket over them, along with a large bowl of tossed salad. He’d figured out pretty quickly that they’d eat whatever he gave them, but they both preferred food rams would normally eat. When he sat down beside them with his sandwich, they only reached out to tangle a bit of their Cosmos with his. He returned the gesture, like hands that bind and squeeze tight.

Aries let out a soft hum, Cosmos relaxed. Things could be worse. 


End file.
